The Regime's ‘Musical Weapon’ Transformed: The Reception of Johann Strauss Sr's Radetzky March Before and After the First World War

Johann Strauss Sr's most famous composition, his 1848 Radetzky March, was premièred during revolutionary times. The March soon became a standard piece for Habsburg bands in the nineteenth century and was considered ideal for fostering patriotic sentiments at the start of the First World War. After the Great War, however, commentators portrayed the work very differently. No longer a part of contemporary culture, the Radetzky March now belonged to a bygone era. Biographers of the Strauss family found this work to be proof of Strauss Sr's support for the conservatives during the Revolution, a claim not supported by evidence. More generally, treating the piece as a relic from another age transformed it into a marker of nostalgia in the 1930s, as is best demonstrated in Joseph Roth's novel, Radetzkymarsch (1932).

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Shell Shock and the Legacy of the Victorian Past in the Present: Remembering WWI in Pat Barker’s Another World

Humanities ◽

10.3390/h9010026 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 26

Author(s):

Elodie Rousselot

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

First World War ◽

Great War ◽

Great Success ◽

The Novel ◽

World War ◽

Shell Shock ◽

The First World War ◽

The Great War ◽

First World

In her 1998 novel Another World, Pat Barker draws from a topic on which she has written previously with great success—the First World War and the experiences of its combatants—and yet approaches that topic from a completely different perspective. The novel returns to the Great War to consider notions of ‘shell shock’, attitudes towards WWI veterans, and the problems surrounding remembering past violence, but what is perhaps surprising about Another World is that it uses a Victorian storyline to address these concerns, and presents the First World War through the means of references to nineteenth-century culture.

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A New History for a New Channel: The Great War and the Launch of BBC2

Journal of British Cinema and Television ◽

10.3366/jbctv.2017.0374 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 283-297 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Taylor Downing

Keyword(s):

First World War ◽

Great War ◽

World War ◽

Front Line ◽

Television History ◽

The First World War ◽

The Great War ◽

First World ◽

Intense Debate ◽

Do So

This article considers the making of the BBC2 series, The Great War, and examines issues around the treatment and presentation of the First World War on television, the reception of the series in 1964 and its impact on the making of television history over the last fifty years. The Great War combined archive film with interviews from front-line soldiers, nurses and war workers, giving a totally new feel to the depiction of history on television. Many aspects of The Great War were controversial and raised intense debate at the time and have continued to do so ever since.

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